1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a control method, and a computer-readable storage medium and, more particularly, to a method for notifying a user of a processing result when executing job data using a hot folder.
2. Description of the Related Art
A photo processing system is known as a system for printing taken photos, which receives image data to be printed and performs print processing using the image data to create photo prints for an album or the like. When image data to be printed is designated, the image data and a setting information file are stored in a folder called a hot folder. The “hot folder” is set in a mass storage device such as a hard disk to store image data to be processed. Conventionally, a folder monitoring function is provided for the hot folder to detect new data stored in it and perform predetermined processing for the data.
When used from another system such as a photo processing system, the hot folder can implement a printing function by simply entering an image file to the folder without using any special API, unlike a normal printing application. This convenience of cooperation with another system is the key feature of the hot folder. In a general hot folder application, the user (client application or operator) uses the management UI of the hot folder application to confirm the status of a job entered to the hot folder application.
A hot folder application proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-222661 expresses the status of a job using an extension added to the folder name of the job folder stored in the hot folder. Detailed information about the job is written in a file created in the job folder to represent the details of the job status.
However, this related art has the following problems. In the general hot folder application, the user needs to confirm the job status on the management UI of the hot folder application. For this reason, the operator needs to know the operation procedure of the management UI to confirm the status of a job entered to the hot folder. That is, the operator is forced to master the UI operation. In addition, a program that enters a job to the hot folder cannot refer to the management UI.
The hot folder application of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-222661 creates the file representing the details of the job status under the job folder arranged in the hot folder. Hence, the client application or operator that uses the hot folder application needs to refer to the file representing the details of the status in the job folder after the change of the hot folder name has been detected.